IEEE Xplore User Tips

User Tips

Get the most out of IEEE Xplore with the following user tips.

Search Tips

Get tips on how to maximize searching in IEEE Xplore.

Search within a journal

Want to search within a specific IEEE journal or magazine? There are a couple of ways you can do this. The most efficient way is to navigate to the journal homepage on IEEE Xplore, click the Search Within checkbox under the global search bar and enter your search terms in the global search bar. This option alleviates any issues with typing the publication title in incorrectly.
Or you can use the Publication Title field in the drop down menus on the Advanced Search page and Command Search page or use the following syntax on the global search bar "Publication Title:".

Author Search

Select the Author Search option from the drop down menu on the global search bar on the IEEE Xplore homepage to search by first name / given name and last name / surname. IEEE links and normalizes the various versions of an author's name in IEEE Xplore by establishing an authority file for each author and identifying all articles written by that author. For example, searching for Norman Smith will also retrieve any articles this individual published under N. Smith, N.W. Smith, or any other variation. In addition, author names in IEEE Xplore are hyperlinked. Click on any author name to see the author details page.

Affiliation searching

See what your counterparts at other institutions are doing by searching author affiliations. On the Advanced Search page, select Author Affiliation in the dropdown menu to narrow the search to the author's institution. This is useful when you cannot remember an author's name or for competitive intelligence. You can also use the affiliation field to narrow your search to a specific geographic region by searching on the city, state, and/or country.

Searching for exact phrases or words

When you enter two or more words in IEEE Xplore, the database looks for all of the words but not necessarily as a phrase. To search for an exact phrase, place the phrase in quotes. For example, searching for "cloud computing" will only retrieve articles with the exact phrase cloud computing. IEEE Xplore automatically finds verb tenses, pluralized nouns, and British/American spelling variations for most terms. Placing a term or phrase in quotes will also turn off the automatic stem variations. For example, searching for LED without quotes will find verb tenses lead, leading, etc. But searching for "LED" will only retrieve articles with the exact word LED. You can, however, use the asterisk wildcard (*) within quotes to get word variations. For example, "software program*" will retrieve the exact phrases software program, software programs, software programming, etc.

Searching the full text

The default in IEEE Xplore is to search metadata only, which includes abstracts, indexing terms, and bibliographic citation information (article titles, author names, publication titles, etc.). There are several ways to do a full text search in IEEE Xplore.

On the Advanced Search page use the drop down menu to select Full Text & Metadata or Full Text Only
On the Command Search page use the Data Fields drop down menu to select Full Text & Metadata or Full Text Only (Note: the field name must appear before each search term or phrase that you want to search for in the full text)
On the global search bar on the IEEE Xplore homepage use the following syntax before each search term and phrase: "Full Text .AND. Metadata": or "Full Text Only":
You can also customize the default to Full Text & Metadata or Full Text Only with an IEEE personal account

Searching with wildcards

IEEE Xplore automatically retrieves pluralized nouns, verb tenses, and British/American spelling variations for most words. For example, if you search "simulate", your search results will include any articles with "simulate", "simulates", "simulated", or "simulating". If you would like to search for all variations of the word, such as "simulation" and "simulator", you can use the asterisk wildcard. Simulat* will find any word that begins with "simulat". You can use up to 10 asterisk wildcards per search, and the asterisk wildcard can be used at the beginning of a word (*medical), in the middle of a word (wom*n), or at the end of a word (simulat*).

Boolean operators

You can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) in the basic, advanced and command search options on IEEE Xplore. Proximity operators (NEAR, ONEAR) can also be used in basic and command search. Learn more about using search operators.

Proximity searching

IEEE Xplore has two proximity operators: NEAR (for unordered proximity searches) and ONEAR (for ordered proximity searches). Proximity searching is supported in both basic and command search. The Command Search page can be accessed from the Other Search Options drop down menu below the basic search bar.

Example: implantable NEAR/3 cardiac finds articles with the word implantable within three words of cardiac; cardiac can come before or after implantable.
Example: implantable ONEAR/3 cardiac finds articles with the word implantable within three words of cardiac; but implantable must come before cardiac.

Search history

The enhanced search history feature saves your 100 most recent searches for later viewing and allows you to create more complex searches by combing previous searches. To use search history, sign in with your personal IEEE account and turn on the search history recording feature in preferences.

To combine previous search sets, access your search history from the My Settings drop-down menu along the blue navigation bar. Select the checkbox for each search set you would like to combine. Use the drop-down menu to select AND, OR, or NOT and then select Combine to run your new search.

Please note: To take advantage of the personalization features in IEEE Xplore, such as preferences and search history, you must first set up a free personal account. Select the Create Account link in the upper right-hand corner and follow the three-click process. Once you have created an account, use the Sign In link in the upper right-hand corner each time you come to IEEE Xplore.

Citation search

Looking for a specific article that a colleague has recommended or from a reference list? Go to the Advanced Search page and select the Citation Search tab. Enter the bibliographic information you know, such as author, document title, publication year, or page number, and IEEE Xplore will retrieve the article you are looking for.

Stop Words

Stop words are words ignored by the IEEE Xplore search engine because they are too general or occur too frequently in the database to be useful. Examples include a, and, are, for, in, is, not, on, and the. See the complete list of stop words in IEEE Xplore.

Working with Search Results

Time-saving tips on working with search results.

Refining your search

If you need to narrow your search results, use the search within function at the top of the search results page to add an additional search term or concept, narrow down by type of content, and/or use the facets along the left hand side of the search results page to help you filter your results.

Publication Topics facet

Whether you are exploring a technology that is new to you, need to identify related concepts, or just don't know where to start to refine your search results, the publication topic facet can help. This facet will show you the top 25 keywords for your search results. Select a publication topic to narrow your results to documents that have been indexed with that term.

Content Types

At the top of the search results page, you can narrow your search by content type:

Conferences: Cutting-edge papers presented at IEEE conferences globally featuring the latest research, often published before many leading journals (Tip: Looking for the latest technology breakthroughs? Narrow to conferences and sort Newest First)
Journals: Peer-reviewed, expert-authored articles on emerging research that advances technology (Tip: Looking for influential papers that have made an impact on the field? Narrow to journals and sort Most Cited by Papers or Most Cited by Patents)
Magazines: Content focused on practical applications in research, design, and specification (Tip: Looking for an overview of a technology? Try narrowing to magazines and sorting Most Popular)
Early Access Articles: Intended to help authors get published as quickly as possible. Early Access articles are accepted and peer-reviewed, but may not be fully edited or assigned to a publication issue or volume. All Early Access articles are fully citable as soon as they appear in IEEE Xplore.
Books: Practical handbooks, introductory and advanced texts, reference works, and professional books that span numerous content areas
Courses: Peer-reviewed IEEE educational online learning courses
Standards: Specifications used by worldwide industries and companies to ensure safety, drive technology, and develop markets

Sorting search results

Looking for the latest technology breakthroughs? The most influential papers on a topic? Trending content for your area of interest? On the search results page change the order in which your search results are displayed to Newest First, Most Cited, or Most Popular (the default is by relevance) by using the Sort By dropdown menu:

Relevance: sorted by how well the result matches the search query as determined by IEEE Xplore; the documents that are most likely to be relevant to your query are shown at the top.
Newest First: in chronological order by publication year, beginning with the most recent.
Oldest First: in reverse chronological order by publication year, beginning with the oldest.
Most Cited (By Papers): sorted by the number of citing documents, beginning with the document that has the highest number of paper citations.
Most Cited (By Patents): sorted by the number of patent citations from the US Patent Office and the European Patent Office, beginning with the document that has the highest number of patent citations.
Most Popular: sorted by the number of downloads by all IEEE Xplore users, beginning with the document that has the highest number of full text views.
Publication Title A-Z: in alphabetical order, ignoring articles such as "a", "the", and "an".
Publication Title Z-A: in reverse alphabetical, ignoring articles such as "a," "the," and "an."

Multi PDF download

Save time by selecting up to 10 documents from your search results set or a table of contents and click "Download PDFs" at the top of the page.

Downloading Citations

IEEE Xplore bibliographic references are easily downloadable in several popular formats. Each abstract offers a Download Citation option. Choose your preferred format: Plain text, BibTex, RIS, and RefWorks.

You can also download multiple citations at once from the search results page. Select the checkbox to the left of each article you are interested in and then select the Download Citations option at the top of the page.

Please note: You can only download citations from one page of search results at a time.

Patent Citations

Has your IEEE paper been cited by any US patents or European patents? Go to the "cited by" tab in the IEEE Xplore article abstract record to check. IEEE Xplore now includes US and European patents that cite an article and you can view the full text of the patent via links to the patent office. You can also sort your search results to see which articles have been cited in the most patents.

Narrow to your subscribed content

Want to only see content the content you can access? On the search results page, select "Subscribed Content" in the Show box on the left-hand side of the page.

Find Open Access articles

You can narrow your search results to display only open access articles by selecting "Open Access Only" in the Show box on the left-hand side of the search results page.

Recommended publications

Need help identifying a journal or conference on your area of interest? Run a search on the topic in IEEE Xplore and towards the top of the search results page you will see up to four recommended publications.

You can also see the journals, magazines, and conferences that published the most number of documents for your search in the Publication Title facet on the left hand side of the search results page. This can be helpful in identifying relevant conferences to attend, journals to read, and publications to submit papers.

Finding experts

Looking for technology influencers, key researchers, or subject matter experts within a particular technology or industry? Simply execute a search on the area of interest and scroll to the Author facet on the left hand side of the search results page. Here you will see the top authors listed based on record count (the number of articles they have published on the topic).
To learn more about an author, click on their name to go to the author details page where you will see their bio (if available), photo (if available), top publication topics, co-authors, metrics, and publications in IEEE Xplore.

Cited by documents

To see a list of papers that have cited an IEEE article, click on the title of the document and go to the Citations section. Here you will see the IEEE papers that have cited the document, papers from other publishers (provided by CrossRef) that have cited the document, and patents from the U.S. Patent Office and the European Patent Office that have cited the document. To see citations from other databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, go to the Metrics section. In addition, you can sort your search results by Most Cited to see the number of times an article has been cited on the search results page.

Other Tips

Download Full Journal Issue

Did you know you can download a complete journal or magazine cover to cover? For most IEEE titles, the full issue is now available in one PDF for offline reading. Go to the table of contents page and select "Get Entire Issue Now".
To save time and ensure you don't miss an issue, set up a table of contents alert for key publications to be notified when a new issue is available and add those titles to "My Favorite Journals" for quick access from the IEEE Xplore homepage.

Please note: To take advantage of the personalization features in IEEE Xplore, such as Table of Contents alerts, you must first set up a free personal account. Select the Create Account link in the upper right-hand corner and follow a simple three-click process. Once you have created an account, use the Sign In link in the upper right-hand corner each time you come to IEEE Xplore.

IEEE Xplore can help you discover top search terms and trending content. Click on "Top Searches" on the IEEE Xplore homepage to see the top 10 search terms. Click "View More" to see the top 25 as well as the most popular journal articles, conference papers, standards, and eBooks. The Top Searches and Popular Content can help with ideation as well as to gauge interest and understand what technologies are important to engineers and researchers around the world.

Author Alerts

On the author details page, select "Follow This Author" to set up an alert to be notified when the author publishes new content in IEEE Xplore. You can create up to 15 author alerts.

Please note: To take advantage of the personalization features in IEEE Xplore, such as author alerts, you must first set up a free personal account. Select the Create Account link in the upper right-hand corner and follow a simple three-click process. Once you have created an account, use the Sign In link in the upper right-hand corner each time you come to IEEE Xplore.

Some IEEE papers include supplemental materials. The supplemental items facet on the left hand side of the search results page will allow you to narrow down your search results to papers that include Code in Code Ocean; Datasets in IEEE Dataport; Media such as audio, video, and PowerPoint presentations; and Video of conference presentations.

HTML Articles

Many IEEE articles can now be viewed on online as well as in the original PDF format, which allows you to:

Quickly scroll through all of the figures from the paper.
Easily download hi-res versions of figures, graphics, and images.
View and copy mathematical equations, expressions, and formulas.
Navigate between sections of long articles with intuitive navigation.
Find supplemental materials associated with the paper such as Code, Datasets, Media or Video

Copying Equations

Want to capture an equation from an IEEE paper? Go to the full-text HTML version of the article and select the View Source link below the equation. You can copy and paste the TeX source for the equation into a program with an equation editor.
Some HTML articles also include MathJax. MathJax is a display technology that works with all modern Web browsers including those on mobile devices. It enables significantly improved on-screen rendering of math equations within articles and allows you to view and copy MathML code, as well as TeX Commands. In an HTML article, hover over an equation, right click, and choose "Show Math As" to reveal the equation in either MathML or TeX Commands. Choosing Math Settings allows changes to other options like zoom trigger and magnification.

Metrics

Looking for journal citation metrics for IEEE Journals? You can see the Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, Article Influence Score, and CiteScore on the journal home pages in IEEE Xplore. To access a journal home page, go to Browse Journals & Magazines and select the title of the journal or select a journal title in the search results page or article abstract page.

To see article-level metrics, go to the "Metrics" tab on an IEEE Xplore article abstract page to see how many times an article has been downloaded and compare citations counts from CrossRef, Scopus, and Web of Science.

IEEE Xplore offers a variety of features to save and share your research, including:

Download Citation - build a bibliography in Plain Text, BibTeX, or Refworks.
Export Results - download up to 1,000 records into an Excel spreadsheet with approximately 30 fields
Set Search Alert - save your search and receive a weekly email alert for new content that meets your search criteria
Email Article Links - an email icon appears on all abstract pages so you can easily email links to IEEE Xplore articles

Saved Searches

Stay up-to-date with the latest research by setting up search alerts on saved searches. Once you have completed a search, select "Set Search Alerts" on the search results page. You will receive an email once a week alerting you to any new content added that week that meets your search criteria. To access your saved searches, go to the My Settings drop-down menu on the blue navigation bar and select Saved Searches.

Please note: To take advantage of the personalization features in IEEE Xplore, such as saved searches, you must first set up a free personal account. Select the Create Account link in the upper right-hand corner and follow a simple three-click process. Once you have created an account, use the Sign In link in the upper right-hand corner each time you come to IEEE Xplore.

Table of Contents Alerts

Email alerts and RSS feeds are available for each of the journals and magazines available in IEEE Xplore, so you can choose the titles that matter most to you. To set up Table of Contents alerts, select Alerts from the My Settings drop-down menu on the blue navigation bar. To set up an email alert, select the checkbox to the left of each title that you are interested in and select Update. Once you have done that, you will begin receiving emails each time that journal or magazine is posted online with a link to the table of contents.

You can also sign up for a weekly alert identifying new conferences added to Xplore that week.

Email Article Links

It's easy to share information with your colleagues. Every article details page in IEEE Xplore includes an email link at the top of the page. The email is automatically populated with a link to the article. Simply provide your name, your email address, and the recipient's email address to share the article with a colleague. You can even provide a message to be included in the email, if desired.

Title History

Finding the title history for a journal or magazine in IEEE Xplore is easy. Simply go to Browse Journals & Magazines. Find the specific title you are interested in and select Title History to display the complete list of previous titles. You can also see the title history by selecting the name of the journal or magazine and going to the publication homepage. The homepage also includes a description of the publication, links to the Society(s) that publishes it, contact information, persistent URL, ISSN, and publication frequency.

Multimedia Links

Some articles in IEEE Xplore contain an external file to help understand or further illustrate the concepts presented by the author. These files can include multimedia such as the PowerPoint presentation given at a conference or other types of content such as graphics and spreadsheets. To access these materials, select the Multimedia link in the table of contents or on the article details page.

Title Lists

IEEE provides comprehensive lists of IEEE journals, magazines, conference proceedings, standards, eBooks and educational courses. The lists can be downloaded in comma delimited or Excel format and provide information such as title, ISSN, start date, end date, issues per year, and persistent URL. To access these lists, go to the Browse option on IEEE Xplore, select the type of content, such as Journals & Magazines, and select Title List on the right-hand side of the page.

Standards Dictionary

The IEEE Standards Dictionary has been integrated into IEEE Xplore in a format allowing for contextual discovery and browse. With over 39,000 standards terms and complete source citations of definitions, the IEEE Standards Dictionary Online is a comprehensive database of standards terminology.
Institutional subscribers with access to the IEEE Standards Dictionary will see a standards dictionary module on the right-hand side of the search results page. IEEE Xplore will return the top dictionary terms based on the standards in your search results set. Selecting a term will take you to the definition of that term. Or you can search by keyword or browse alphabetically by technology area or by standard number in IEEE Xplore.

Export Results

You can easily download your search results list to a CSV file by selecting Exporton the search results page. Download up to 2,000 records with approximately 30 fields of metadata to help you analyze and draw conclusions from your dataset, track content trends, review author affiliation data for competitive analysis, and much more.

Browsing Standards

Not sure where to begin exploring IEEE standards? Go to Browse Standards and select the "By ICS Code" tab to browse standards by subject. This is a hierarchical categorization that will allow you to start broadly with topics such as Electrical Engineering and then drill down by subtopics.
Note: The ICS (International Classification for Standards) is a standard published by the International Organization for Standards (ISO) and serves as a structure for catalogues and other normative documents worldwide.

Browsing Standards by Number

Looking for a specific standard and you know the number? The most efficient way to access it is to go to Browse Standards and select the "By Number" tab. You can either enter the number of the standard in the "Search by keywords or by standards number" search box or go to the number range to browse for the standard. On the Browse page you will see a complete list of all the versions of the standard, be able to easily identify the active, approved version of the standard, and quickly see if there are any amendments available.